William Charles Macready

William Charles Macready, born in London on 3 March 1793, was an English stage actor who became one of the leading theatrical figures of the nineteenth century. The son of actor-manager William Macready the Elder and actress Christina Ann Birch, he was educated at Rugby School, where he served as head boy and where a theatre now bears his name. His original intention was to study at the University of Oxford, but financial difficulties facing his father, who held leases on several provincial theatres, drew Macready into theatrical management in 1809. He made his first stage appearance as Romeo in Birmingham on 7 June 1810.

After a period performing Shakespearean roles, a serious falling-out with his father led Macready to relocate to Bath in 1814, where he remained for two years while making occasional appearances in other provincial towns. His London debut came on 16 September 1816 at Covent Garden, where he played Orestes in The Distressed Mother, Ambrose Philips's translation of Racine's Andromaque. His early London work concentrated on romantic drama, and in 1818 he achieved lasting success in Isaac Pocock's adaptation of Scott's Rob Roy. He demonstrated his range in tragedy when he took on Richard III at Covent Garden on 25 October 1819, and in 1820 he played the title role in James Sheridan Knowles's Virginius.

Moving to Drury Lane, Macready continued to build his reputation, with a particularly notable success in the title role of Knowles's William Tell on 11 May 1825. He completed a successful engagement in the United States in 1826 and received a strong reception during performances in Paris in 1828. In 1829 he appeared as Othello in Warwick, and on 15 December 1830 he took the stage at Drury Lane as Werner, a role considered among his most powerful. The early 1830s brought further Shakespearean work, including Antony and Cleopatra, Byron's Sardanapalus, and King Lear, all in 1833. His restoration of Shakespeare's original text of King Lear, begun in 1834 and more fully realized in 1838, ended more than 150 years of reliance on Nahum Tate's altered version with its happy ending.

Macready assumed management of Covent Garden in 1837, using the position to champion new English drama. He introduced Robert Browning's Strafford and, the following year, Bulwer-Lytton's The Lady of Lyons and Richelieu, playing the principal characters in both. On 10 June 1838, he gave a celebrated performance of Henry V for which the painter Stanfield prepared sketches and the production was overseen by Bulwer-Lytton, Dickens, Forster, Maclise, and W. J. Fox, among others. The first production of Bulwer-Lytton's Money, staged on 8 December 1840 under the artistic direction of Count d'Orsay, saw Macready earn strong recognition in the role of Alfred Evelyn. He resigned the management of Covent Garden in 1839 and held Drury Lane from 1841 to 1843, though in both cases he found his ambitions for the stage limited by insufficient public support. In 1843 he staged Cymbeline.

Macready made a successful tour of the United States in 1843 and 1844, but his final visit to that country, in 1849, was overshadowed by the Astor Place Riot, in which between 22 and 31 people were killed and more than 120 injured. At the time of the riot, both Macready and the American actor Edwin Forrest were performing Macbeth in simultaneous, competing productions, a circumstance that deepened the already ominous reputation surrounding that play. Judge Charles Patrick Daly later presided at the trial arising from the events. Playwright Richard Nelson dramatized the episode in his 1990 work Two Shakespearean Actors. It was during this 1849 visit that Macready appeared on Broadway, with Macbeth among his credits. He gave his farewell performance, again as Macbeth, at Drury Lane on 26 February 1851.

In his personal life, Macready married Catherine Frances Atkins in 1823; she died in 1852, and of their many children only one son and one daughter survived. In 1860, at the age of 67, he married Cecile Louise Frederica Spencer, then 23 years old. Their son, Cecil Frederick Nevil Macready, rose to the rank of General in the British Army and was made a baronet. Macready's brother, Major Edward Nevil Macready, commanded the Light Company of the 30th Regiment of Foot during the closing stages of the Battle of Waterloo. His daughter, Catherine Frances Macready, was a minor Victorian poet whose collection Leaves From the Olive Mount, published by Chapman and Hall in 1860, opened with a dedication poem to her father. Writer Rowena Farre, whose given name was Daphne Lois Macready, was a great-granddaughter of William Macready.

Actor Frank Barrie wrote and performed a one-man play titled Macready!, first staged in 1979 and eventually performed in 65 countries. A television adaptation broadcast on Channel 4 in 1983 as a one-hour special again featured Barrie in the role. In 1927, the Cheltenham Local Tablets Committee placed a bronze tablet at 6 Wellington Square recording Macready's residence there from 1860 to 1873. The London County Council affixed a blue plaque to his birthplace at 45 Stanhope Street, Regent's Park, on 25 June 1928; the house was later demolished, and the plaque was donated to the Theatre Museum around 1965, passing to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2007. Macready died at Cheltenham on 27 April 1873, and his remains were deposited in the catacomb below the Anglican Chapel at Kensal Green Cemetery.